Iden butterfly plate

See also:

Iden butterfly plate - 9⅞" (250 mm) diameter.

Dennis Townsend (b.1933) is one of the most respected of the Rye Potters.
He started work at Rye Pottery in
1947, joining David Sharp as a fellow apprentice.

His career with Rye Pottery followed much the same pattern as David Sharp's
- he went away to do his National Service when he was twenty-one, at the
end of his apprenticeship, but stayed for only three years when he returned.
Rye pottery could not afford to support too many fully qualified potters,
so he left to form Iden Pottery.

For those of you old enough to remember the BBC TV 'Interlude' footage
of a potter's wheel, Dennis's hands were the ones throwing the pot.

Iden Pottery is best known for its stoneware, and the quality has always
been excellent.

Dennis with hiseyes closed

It was set up by Dennis Townsend
at his home in Iden, a village near Rye, when he left the Rye Pottery in
1959. Due to lack of space in his garden shed workshop he moved to larger
premises in 1962, and then again in 1966 to Rye, taking over the premises
of Ray Everett in Conduit Hill, where
he operated until its closure.

By 1968 there was a large export side to the business, and at home the
wares were stocked by Heals and Harrods. In 1972 Jim Elliot bought in as
a partner (Jim was later to take over Cinque
Ports) and stayed until 1980. Over the years the company expanded and
contracted to suit the economic climate, and managed at best to be very
successful and at worst to keep its head above water.

In the early 1990s Iden were involved in a commercial venture that enabled
them to supply goods for export in much larger quantities than could be
handled by the pottery in Rye. Dennis's son, David, established the
Oxney Green company to handle the
large-scale manufacture of goods in Stoke-on-Trent. Patterns were made and
hand-painted in Rye and sent to Stoke where they were mass-produced and
printed with an eight-colour
process that was difficult to distinguish from the hand-painted originals.
The largest number of Oxney Green products went to Martha's Vineyard in the
USA, but there were three other importers in America and some in Japan.

Iden pots can sometimes be dated by closely looking at the blue oxide
backstamp. In 1974 a small notch was cut in the outer circle, and another
each following year. Count the notches, if you can see them, and add them
to 1974.

The pottery was run by Dennis and his wife, Maureen, producing mainly for
the export market until the couple retired in 2002,

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